IOL Strength and Conditioning

The Cutting Edge of Function, with Fraser Quelch

The Las Vegas IDEA personal trainer conference opened early for me with a day-long pre-conference class taught by Fraser Quelch, the guy who’s behind the gathering and organizing of a vast array of exercises done with the TRX Suspension Trainer.

Starting with a foot on the floor, this session traced the actions of the muscular-skeletal system during basic actions like walking and training, muscular reaction to gravity, the ground and momentum, corrective exercises easing into functional movements, the planes of motion common exercises work through and, taking that into consideration, how to program more effective workouts.

His main gig is this: Get your body working in as many angles and directions as you can dream up, and make sure the movements cover all the major joints… in all directions – all joints, all planes of motion.

Let’s look at an example from Fraser’s article on Multi-Planar Training (click to read in full). About mid-way through the article he documents the movement planes of a traditional bodypart training program. It’s a common-looking program, plenty of good exercises that includes squats, lunges, leg extension, leg curls and calf raises on the leg day, for example.

After his mapping of the primary joints and planes of motion using the sample workout, he writes,

“Hip is primarily involved in only 2 of 22 exercises
Shoulder is primarily involved in 9 of 22 exercises
Spine is primarily involved in only 5 of 23 exercises
Elbow is primarily involved in 9 of 23 exercises, more than the hip and the spine combined

15 (68%) occur in the sagittal plane
2 (9%) occur in the frontal plane, both at the shoulder joint.
5 (23%) occur in the transverse plane, the majority of these were also at the shoulder and none at the hip.”

What do you know?! It’s an average weekly training routine, and it’s upside down. I’m telling you, he spent the day leading us slowly and patiently to one blatant conclusion: Our normal gym-based programs need to be re-evaluated. Bigtime.

Here’s the link again to the multi-planar training article where Fraser explains, including a revised sample workout that he’s split into one third in each plane of motion, plus charts that will make his training philosophy clear… and compelling.

To make this multi-planar thing easier to figure out, consider a splurge for a TRX Suspension trainer because that really makes blending planes of motion simple (if you’re a personal trainer, this is a shoe-in, no kidding). Fraser didn’t do a sales pitch in the session, that wasn’t what this was about. But after watching that treasure in action as he demonstrated a few of his points, I bought one and have used it daily since. I love that thing.

Say, you still have any of that stimulus check left? This suspension style of training will seriously stimulate you, no doubt about it. Aside from making the multi-planar action easy and fun, it’s demanding on the core in pretty much everything that can be done on this thing, which is pretty much unlimited as far as I can tell. Suspension training also works the joints differently than our traditional training, because they have to stabilize continually, and again, in all planes of motion.

We had a longer discussion of the TRX here in the forum, where Fred Fornicola and Jim Bryan offered their more-experienced considerations, along with some suspension training workout plans, and where Byron Chandler has suggestions on how to trick out your existing ring set-up to more closely match the TRX design. The talented frugal types will be able to pull this off easily enough.

Tuesday, July 8
Tagging along with 5,000 personal trainers and group exercise instructors is a good way to run a normal person ragged. It’s been a dozen years since my last visit to IDEA, and in the years between, I’d forgotten how fast everyone moves at these things. From the bowels of the Las Vegas Convention Center to the far side of the Hilton, including a jog through the restroom and a swing by the session-handout print station, 12 minutes flat. The organizers allow about 15 minutes between sessions, and that’s because these folks don’t need any longer.

A couple of those 12 flying minutes include a race-walk outdoors between the two massive structures a few times each day; I’d also forgotten the heat of 112 degrees. That’ll bake some sense into ya.

An all-day session, The Cutting Edge of Function, on Tuesday with Fraser Quelch, the guy who’s behind the programming of the TRX Suspension training, was a perfect introduction to the week’s selection of functional assessment and corrective exercise programming classes. He’s an outstanding instructor who described movement from the ground up; the entire day kept me attentive, with his discussion of multi-planar training being the highlight.

Wednesday, July 9

Gyrokinesis Group (workout), Emma Kingston
Start the day with a workout, isn’t that how it’s supposed to go? My real plan for the week was to soak up a dufflebag of corrective exercise tidbits to share with interested readers. In workout selection, for the heck of it I chose modes of training I’d never tried. In the case of Wednesday morning, I’d never even heard of it and had absolutely no idea what to expect. Gyrokinesis turns out to be a form of joint mobility. I’m really a fan of joint mobility and the class was good enough. Nothing special, but an okay way to wake up the day.

Keys to Successful Corrective Exercise Design, Justin Price
Justin’s real terrific at this stuff, and I signed up for two of his presentations this time around. He’s the guy who spoke at a workshop in February over in Santa Clara, who, after I asked him a question about Nike Frees (he’s no fan), told me my feet/hip/thoracic/shoulder/neck dysfunctions could take me up to three years to get sorted out. Instead of hating him for life, I went back for more. You should, too, if you get a chance to hear him speak.

Alphabics Ultimate Relaxation exercise (workout)
During the long lunch break (they leave big empty time slots for big-bucks expo shopping), I filled my time with promo sessions. This day, I have to admit, I snuck out early. It’s the only session that triggered that slippery action this year – all the sessions I chose were bang-on perfect for what I needed. I suppose I could have taken a nap in the back, but the music was too much and I bailed.

Assessment and Reaction-Shoulder Function, Chuck Wolf
Now let me tell you a little about Chuck Wolf: What a prince! Smart and generous, too. I’d never heard him speak before and very quickly knew his three sessions on my schedule were winners. As I go through my notes from the week, his suggestions for shoulder training will be at the top of the list for sharing with you.

Stott Pilates Jumpboard Interval Training (workout), John Garey
Jumpboard training was a kick; this was another of the try-something-new workouts, and it was a blast. I could see myself stumbling through a Pilates reformer workout, definitely. For those who haven’t even as much as a clue as me, the reformer is that machine with the padded board and all those springs. Between rebounding intervals, I got a taste of deep core training with the feet going one direction and the arms under stress from another. Very nice, I like.

Thursday, July 10Barefoot Core Workout (workout), Annette Lang
Arrive a few minutes late and jump right in, oh yeah, that’s how to really set your guts on fire. And as long as you’re in place, stay there for 75 minutes and do nothing but core. My sides ached for the next three days.

Assessment and Reaction-Foot Function, Chuck Wolf
We’re back with Chuck for session two of the three-parter, wherein he dissects the function of the feet, leads us up the legs and toward the hips. Most of us pay no attention to our feet, and Chuck would like to change that. He’s pretty convincing; I’ll be attending to the foot musculature, and will try to talk you into that, too.

Comprehensive Trunk and Spine Conditioning, Kevin Dunn
Now here I’m coming up a little short. The intention of this blog post was more one of personality, to give you a general feel for the event and its sessions. In a lecture entitled “Comprehensive Trunk and Spine Conditioning” you’d think there’d be a bunch to say, but here you’d be mistaken. Still, I remember a couple of ah-ha moments, so stay tuned for those after the scribbles get sorted out of my notepad. I did take a lot of notes.

Gliding and Bender ball (workout), Mindy Mylrea
Lunch workout number two, where I scurried across the mileage to watch my old pal, Mindy, share her energetic magic. She’s a kick and a half, and I adore watching her work the crowd. Then I slid out the door to get to a second lunch session, Paul Chek, who was speaking at the other side of the convention center in a conflicting timeslot. Bumping into Mindy a couple hours later, I was busted: Eagle Eye saw me leave before the workout. Amazing, 200 people in a hotel ballroom, and Mindy knew I was gone. You have to laugh.

If you’re in central California and would like a grin, too, Mindy’s FitFest 08 is the last week of September in San Jose, where she and a bunch of her peers will be presenting much of the same material as seen at IDEA.

Functional Exercise, Paul Chek
I cannot tell a lie: I went to this session to get a feeling of Paul’s personality at least as much as to hear his material. He’s everything I was expecting, and that’s a lot in one package. Here, too, I took good notes that you can expect to help me sort through later. Paul has made a huge contribution to the course our industry has taken, let there be no mistake about that part.

Assessment and Reaction-Back Function, Chuck Wolf
Part three and we’re done: Chuck works up the torso from the hips to the chest by way of the back. Now here’s a funny one – he apologizes for repeating the material on planes of motion that he’d covered in an earlier session. Forget that, it took me all three tries to begin to make sense of it, and I’ll be studying it a whole lot more before it gets ingrained. This was my last session with him, and in my head, we’re buds by now.

Stott Pilates Group Sculpt (workout), Moira Merrithew
Wrapping up the day on Thursday with a Pilates workout, again with the idea of trying something new, I slipped into this workshop given by the creator of Stott Pilates. It was a sculpt class using a couple of two-pound toning balls, and as a never-before-pilates participant, I expected to be floundering. Instead, I had no problems, and while I’m well aware there are some extremely fit Pilates enthusiasts who could put me in the ground, I have to say, my regular weight training and kettlebell work put me in a better position for Pilates than Pilates would have done for weight training. The woman next to me, a competitive bodybuilder, shared that opinion. Again, we’re talking about a sculpt class, not a core training class, which I haven’t yet tried and am certain to be fried when I do. What I’m saying is people looking for muscle building would be better suited using some weights.

Still, the toning-ball rotator cuff segment was absolutely outstanding, and in fact, I did it again at home this morning. That part’s a keeper.

Friday, July 11

No More Back Pain — Lumbo-Pelvic Hip Girdle, Justin Price
A Justin Price lecture first thing in the morning, what a way to start the day. Friday started an hour later (I guess they thought the alcohol would start flowing a little faster by Thursday night), so no pre-lecture workout, which was fine because my torso was still singing from the 75-minute core intensive from the previous morning. This workshop covered hip rotation, tilt and elevation (after his signature foot assessments that no lecture goes without), and every person in that class wished to have another couple of hours to glean a bit more JP brain matter.

Assessing Our Assessments, Greg Roskopf
Greg Roskopf is the guy behind the MAT program, Muscle Activation Technique, which we’ll be talking more about as time goes by. For a year I’d been wondering what the heck he was doing, because it’s pretty hard to tell from the write-up on his website. Essentially he’s working with range of motion assessments, same as a lot of folks, but that’s where the similarity ends: He’s flipped the “stretch what’s tight” rule and it becomes “strengthen what’s tight.” There’s more to it, as you can imagine, and we’ll get to that later.

High Performance Swiss Ball, Paul Chek
Today we get to see what made Paul famous: Swiss Ball. And he’s good on that thing, make no mistake. I can assure you, chances are real good your stability ball form is, er, lacking.

What the Hips Lack…Hurts the Back, Anthony Carey
Coming to this corrective exercise umbrella for me came because of years of low-grade back pain. It never got terrible, more like it was… always. Anthony’s book, Pain Free Program, was a key to relief. (Well, actually, it was me faithfully doing the exercises he suggested, so he can’t have all the credit.) I was really looking forward to his wrap-up of the week of study, and he didn’t disappoint. There was a lot of material presented that I’ll be using here in the blog in the coming months. He’s a winner, for sure.

As I sort through my notes and session handouts and run through an expected excessive amount of trial and error, we’ll look at some of the presenters’ theories to apply them to our earlier discussions of corrective exercise. We’ve got a lot to learn, but things are coming together nicely. And heck, we never want to stop learning. Brain function tops all.

There are 206 bones in the human body, and between 640-850 muscles, depending on the source and how that source classifies the muscles. An agreed-upon number does not exist.

The vertebral column (the spine) is made of up 24 vertebrae beginning at the Atlas at the base of the skull, C-1. There are 7 cervical vertebrae, C-1 moving down to C-7, aka the neck, that are naturally lordotic, meaning the bend is toward the front. Next there are 12 thoracic vertebrae connected to the 12 ribs, T-1 down to T-12, and these are naturally kyphotic, with a slight bend toward the rear. Finally there are 5 lumbar vertebrae, L-1 down to L-5, which are again somewhat lordotic with a bend toward the front. At the base of the spine is the sacrum, then the coccyx, both considered part of the pelvis.

Easy markers to find your place in the spine: C-1 is the base of the skull; C-7 is the base of the neck; T-2 is at the top of the scapula; T-7 is the bottom of the scapula; L-4 is the top of the iliac crest (top of the pelvis).

There are 12 pair of ribs (occasionally there are 11 or 13 pair), originating at the corresponding thoracic vertebrae, and, like the thoracic spine, need mobility also: The ribs are suppose to move easily… not a great deal of movement, but easy movement.

Ribs 1-7 attach directly to the sternum; ribs 8-10 attach to the sternum via cartilage; ribs 11 and 12 are floating ribs and do not attach to the sternum at all. This is the reason you need to be careful when foam rolling the lumbar spine. In fact, self-massage of the lumbar spine is best done carefully with a small ball instead of the foam roller.

Intercostals are the muscles between the ribs that hold the ribs together. The diaphragm is a muscle that expands the ribs to make space for the lungs to fill, rather than a “region” below the ribcage.

The coveted “Christmas Tree” shape seen at the base of an extremely lean back isn’t a muscle at all. That’s the tendon the lats attach to called the Thoracolumbar Aponeurosis.

The popping and crunching sound of tendons and ligaments moving around the joints is called crepitus or crepitation. Crepitation is a descriptive word for the sound made, not type of joint injury.

Pelvic tilt or rotation refers to a shifting from neutral, the optimal. Neutral is evenly balanced side to side, top to top and front to back. Posterior tilt moves too far to the back; anterior tilt moves too far to the front; lateral tilt means one side is elevated (hip hitch), which makes the leg on the elevated side functionally (not structurally) shorter. Pelvic rotation adds a turn to the side from the optimal neutral to exterior or interior. A person can have varying degrees of both problemic tilt and rotation, both side or one or the other or even one of each. These conditions are almost always fixable with corrective exercises.

Here’s a simple human movement terminology cheat sheet, and here’s an easy-to-understand explanation of human planes of motion. This section in our forum has been set aside for corrective exercise and rehab questions, and you’re welcome to join us there if you have questions or contributions to the topic.